


Astringent on the Tongue (Rivamika Week 2014)

by alienheartattack (Sanneke)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Dream Sex, F/M, Tea, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 09:00:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3113918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanneke/pseuds/alienheartattack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi's favorite customer at his tea shop has been away for a few weeks, and he misses her terribly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Astringent on the Tongue (Rivamika Week 2014)

Levi does not know her name, but he knows her order: green tea, genmaicha if he has it, with a splash of honey.

"Honey doesn’t splash," he told her the first time he made her drink, sticking a long spoon into a glass jar of raw honey and allowing the sweetener to drip into the steaming brew before giving it a light stir. "It oozes."

She looked down at him then — not an uncommon occurrence, given his height (or lack thereof, as his friends always like to add). “Then I’ll take a genmaicha with an ooze of honey,” she said with a straight face.

It automatically endeared her to him. So when she returned the next day, and the next, then again two days after that, he asked her if she would like a splash of honey with her green tea.

"Yes," she would tell him, "but honey doesn’t splash."

He likes sizing people up based upon their tea orders, does it with all of his friends and regulars. He has always been partial to first flush Darjeeling, its musky spiciness with just a tinge of mouth-puckering astringency, complicated and difficult to appreciate at first. Genmaicha with honey is a bit offbeat, sweet but slightly strange, hinting at a hidden complexity. Levi thinks it is accurate for her. Each day she comes in with something different: a novel, a chemistry textbook, some knitting, a puzzle, two obnoxious friends who spend the entire time debating about which country they should see during their winter break. (He does not allow himself to feel relief at the fact that, although her friends are both male, neither of them seems to be her boyfriend.) Sometimes she brings him something, a bit of green tea cake that she likes to make, old books to fill the wooden shelf that takes up one wall of his café.

"You don’t have to," he tells her each time.

Her reply is always the same: “I want to.”

Then he does not see her. The first day she does not appear comes as no surprise. Her visits are regular, but sporadic: usually a few days a week, but she has been away for ten or so days before — not that he was counting — owing to finals, she later told him. On day three, he wonders whether she will ever return. On day eleven, he starts considering whether he should file a missing persons report. On day seventeen, he finds himself sitting in the darkened shop long after closing, thinking about her but refusing to admit that he misses her, that this is not a normal way to react to his favorite customer going away for a few weeks.

On day twenty, he starts to dream of her.

He figures he should be more concerned than he is, but the thought of seeing her again makes him too happy to care that he has thought about her so much she has now taken up residence in his subconscious. And his heart, he supposes, but the former is easier to swallow and so he worries about his brain before his heart, as he has always done. He is so happy to see her that his dream-self runs toward her with one outstretched hand, but before he can touch her he is jolted awake by the shrill beeping of his alarm clock. He slams his fist into the snooze button and rolls over to try to meet her again, but his trained mind is awake and alert and ready to start another day without her.

That night, he makes a light dinner and he thinks of her. He eats it while watching a movie and thinking of her, trying to prime his mind to see her again. He goes to sleep and he dreams that he is back in high school, unprepared for his calculus final. She is nowhere to be found.

The next night he is luckier. When he goes to sleep he slips into a usual dream where he is closing up the store, reviewing methodically the steps to close the shop: pack away the tea, clean the cups and saucers and strainers, wipe the tables and chairs, mop the floor. He is picking up the chairs and resting them on the tabletops when he hears something behind him, a rattle, a footstep, the ringing of a bell. Levi turns, trying to remember whether he removed that obnoxious bell from the door — he did; it was the first thing he did when he bought the tea shop — and sees her standing there, clad in her usual outfit of a white shirt, dark jeans, and a well-worn red scarf that he has never seen her take off, not even on the hottest days of the year.

She does not speak. She merely takes his hand and leads him to the front of the shop, where she shoves him against the counter and presses her lips to his, consuming him in a deep kiss. He smiles against her mouth as she brushes her tongue against his, then bites down on his lower lip and tugs at it gently. He gasps at the sensation, then returns the favor.

He cups one hand around her face, feeling the sleek curve of her cheek and jaw against his skin, and uses the other hand to tug at the scarf that loops loosely around her neck. Her neck is slim and pale, paler even in the dream-moonlight, and he cannot help but claim it with his lips and his teeth until her skin is marked with watercolor bruises. She inhales sharply, then cries out as he worries at her with his mouth, grabbing fistfuls of his white button-down shirt with grasping hands.

So he bites harder, and so she rips the shirt from his body, sending buttons flying to every corner of the shop. He repays her in kind, doing the same to her shirt (has he really never noticed how similarly they dressed until now, now that she is in his arms and yet not?) and throwing it away. She is not wearing a bra, much to his delight; he has never been able to fully comprehend the confusion of clips and straps. She throws her head back, pressing her chest forward, offering herself to him. He cups one small breast with a hand that he hopes is not shaking and runs his thumb over one peaked nipple.

She shivers and lets out a small breathy sigh. “Please…” she says, and that is all he needs to hear before he replaces his hand with his lips, sucking and drawing on the tight bud, scraping his teeth over it, then repeating his actions on her other side until she is gasping and yelping his name, her hips bucking up against him. He holds her closer, feeling the warmth of her soft skin against his, and slides one hand beneath the waistband of her jeans. Before he can slide his hand any further down (to find how hot she is for him, how incredibly wet and ready she is for him) she slides off her jeans and underwear and kicks them away.

Levi does not take any time to admire her. He has been deprived of her for too long to do anything but spin her around and push her back so she is sitting on the counter. (He knows this is a dream because there are no alarm bells and no klaxons in his head alerting him to health codes and his own punishing standards of cleanliness.) And when he tastes her, she is like the genmaicha, sweet but with a hint of something fuller, something darker just out of reach. He buries his face between her legs and inhales her, drinks her in, alternately soft and hard, teasing and probing, pulling back only to renew his efforts with more vigor. And when his reward comes in the form of her pulling at his hair and writhing and _screaming_  beneath his lips and his tongue and his fingers, he doesn’t stop until she is quietly whimpering and trying to catch her breath.

"You okay?" he asks her as she attempts to lift herself up on her elbows, her legs dangling over the side of the counter.

"Never been better," she breathes, a goofy smile pasted to her face. She rests on the counter for a few moments, Levi idly pressing kisses to her thighs and her belly until she sits up and instructs him to take her place. "I insist," she murmurs, then pulls him close for another kiss, tasting herself on his lips.

"You don’t have to," he whispers as she undoes his cracked leather belt. The hardware clinks beneath her fingers, the soft sound amplified in the nearly-silent shop.

She undoes his pants and pushes them and his boxers down to his knees, then takes his cock in one loose fist, running her hand up and down its length slowly. Levi inhales a shaky breath, tries not to shudder. “I want to,” she answers, then gets down from the counter and takes him in her mouth. 

Levi gasps at the sensation of her slick mouth slowly sliding down his shaft and back up again, sucking at him gently but firmly as she moves. His breath hisses in and out of his mouth and he tangles his hands in her dark hair, wishing he knew her name so he could intersperse it with his gasps and groans and whispered “Oh,  _fuuuuuck_ "s.

After a few minutes she pulls back, stroking him with one hand again, and nips at the inside of one muscular thigh. “Do you want me to keep going, or do you want to fuck me?”

He doesn’t answer her with words: instead he practically lifts her up onto the counter, eliciting a delighted squeal, and plunges into her. She sits up and wraps her legs around his waist, leaning forward to rest her head against his shoulder as he thrusts into her, his hips slapping against hers at a furious pace. It is not his usual style, he thinks; he prefers a slow build, to enjoy the slickness and softness of a woman, but his dream-self wants only her as quickly and as forcefully as possible. He wants to drown in her, to suffuse each cell of his body with her so he can carry her with him.

She wraps her arms around him, pulling him close as he fucks her. He can feel her around him, her mouth crying out against his shoulder, her fingernails scratching his back, her chest and stomach molded to his, her thighs clamped his hips, her heels resting against his ass. He wraps his arms around her as well, squeezing her close to the point where it must hurt her, but she does not seem to mind.

And that’s how he comes: clutching her tightly in the hopes that she’ll never leave him again, his breath ragged against her sweat-slick skin.

He wakes up dripping with sweat, a pillow in his arms, bright morning sunlight making him squeeze his eyes shut and burrow beneath his blanket. He feels a wetness in his boxers and reaches down, then pulls back his hand to find a white pearlescent streak of come across his palm, to smell the salt-musk of his semen and nothing else. His bed seems much larger and emptier than it did before waking and he sniffles then, trying to suppress the urge to cry.

All day he is tense at the shop, shorter than usual with customers. To his regulars he mumbles apologies about having a bad night of sleep; to newcomers he offers them a complimentary treat, seething over the fact that today’s selection from Erwin’s bakery includes a mint-colored matcha chocolate chip cookie in the shape of a tree. He gives those away first.

He usually looks forward to closing, enjoys watching the patrons shuffle home so he can be alone. He used to enjoy the quiet tranquility of empty chairs, but today the space seems to mock him. Levi puts on some music as he cleans, hoping a lack of silence will make him feel less lonely. It does not. So he packs away the tea and cleans the cups and saucers and strainers and wipes the tables and chairs and he mops the floor, trying to push her from his mind. She’ll be back, he tells himself. She has to be back someday.

When he finishes he sits on the counter for the first time since he bought the shop four years earlier, surveying the shop. He looks at her table, the one tucked away in the corner, the one that nonetheless gives her a clear view of him as he boils water, spoons tea leaves into paper teabags, fills jars and canisters with a few ounces of tea for customers to brew at home. He wonders if she ever watches him.

"She’ll be back," he mutters to himself as he lays down on the counter, letting his legs hang over the edge. He stares up at the stamped tin ceiling, keeps the words on his lips like a mantra: she’ll be back, she’ll be back, she’ll be back.

He just lays there, visually tracing the patterns on the ceiling, until he hears a knock at the door. He knows he has flipped the sign to show that the shop is closed, that anyone can see the upturned chairs through the window, so he ignores it. There is no reason for anyone to be here at this time of night, not even him.

There is another series of knocks, louder this time. “We’re closed!” he calls out, not bothering to disguise the exasperation in his voice. The knocking increases until the visitor is banging on the door and Levi is forced to get up. He gets a bit of a headrush as he sits up, hops down from the counter, and storms over to the door.

The stormy look on his face simply vanishes when he sees her there, waving at him with a mittened hand. It has started to snow sometime between closing time and now, and soft white flakes dot her hair.

"Let me in!" she says, her voice muffled behind the glass. "It’s really cold out here!" His fingers fumble at the deadbolt for a moment before he is able to open it and let her in. "I missed this place so much!" she says as she steps into the tea shop.

"What, this shithole?" Levi asks sarcastically.

She snorts. “I missed you, too,” she adds. He looks away, trying to hide the grin that threatens to spread across his face. “I tried to get here before closing, but our flight out of Narita was delayed like three hours.” A tinge of frustration enters her voice, then disappears. “I got you some presents.”

"Oh, come on," he says. "You shouldn’t have done that."

"But I wanted to, so shut up and accept your gifts," she replies with a grin, taking down both chairs from the nearest table. "Sit down." Levi rolls his eyes and does as she says, trying to keep a look of casual frustration on his face but failing as a slight smile starts to peek through his façade.

"So you were in… Asia?" he asks as she takes off her coat and hangs it on the back of her chair. He knows exactly where she has been, but refuses to let on how much of their conversation he has digested and replayed over and over in his head. He certainly refuses to let her know how many times he has eaten Chinese food in her absence — there have been a lot of nights spent in front of the television with a container of takeout and a mug of too-bitter oolong from the place around the corner.

She nods, then sits down across from him at the table. “Yeah, we went through China, me and Eren and Armin. Then three days in Tokyo before we flew home.”

"That sounds great. Wish I could go."

"But you’ve been to Japan before, haven’t you?"

"Being stationed in Okinawa for eight months doesn’t really count," he says with a sardonic half-smile.

"I’ll show you some pictures next time I’m here." She reaches into her purse. "So it’s a pretty obvious gift, but I got you a few kinds of tea. You have so much here, so I tried to get things you didn’t have. Aged Shui Hsien," she says, pulling out a small black cellophane bag tied with a red ribbon and depositing it on the table in front of him. Levi holds the bag in his palm, sniffs it for a hint of honey and smoke. Next comes a gold bag of chrysanthemum tea, and another gold bag of Pu-erh straight from Yunnan.

"You really shouldn’t have," he murmurs as he opens each bag to smell and survey its contents.

"That’s not even my real triumph. I got you—" she reaches in her bag and pulls out another black bag, half the size of the others— "cloud tea."

"Seriously? You got some rare as hell cloud tea  _in China_ , and then brought it back here? No way.”

"Yes way! I had to smuggle it through customs in my underwear. So enjoy that one." Levi’s eyes widen. "Okay, not in my underwear, but I did wrap a pair of my underwear around it so the customs officials wouldn’t look at it when they went through my bag."

"Wow, I just… I don’t deserve this." He looks away from her, unable to meet her eyes. He feels disgusting, thinking that less than a day earlier he was thinking about what it would be like to tear her clothes off. He feels disgusting because he can’t stop thinking about the fact that this bag of tea has touched her underwear.

"You do, Levi," she answers, then covers his hand with her own.

He freezes then, his body stiffening at the feeling of her warm skin against his. He wonders whether his hand is clammy. He realizes he has to say something, do something, but perhaps she is just being kind, just repaying him for all of the times he’s given her a free drink or let her study uninterrupted while he closes the shop.

Before his brain stops short-circuiting, she says, “I should get going,” and rises to leave.

"Yeah," he manages to reply, flipping the chairs back into their position as she puts on her coat, but does not zip it.

"Thanks for letting me in," she tells him, standing by the door but making no effort to move from her spot.

He walks over to her, presumably to let her out but his hands refuse to turn the deadbolt or open the door. “Thank you for bringing me the tea,” he tells her. She gives him a small smile. They both stand there for a few moments, not sure what to do next.

Levi does not know her name, but that does not stop him from grabbing her by that ratty crimson scarf and pulling until her lips collide into his.


End file.
